Pharmacy generally began with the compounding of medicines which entailed the actual mixing and preparing of medications. Heretofore, pharmacy has been, to a great extent, a profession of dispensing, that is, the pouring, counting, and labeling of a prescription, and subsequently transferring the dispensed medication to the patient. Because of the repetitiveness of many of the pharmacist's tasks, automation of these tasks has been desirable.
Some attempts have been made to automate all or portions of the pharmacy environment. Different exemplary approaches are shown in U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,006,946; 6,036,812 and 6,176,392 to Williams et al. and in U.S. Pat. No. 7,014,063 to Shows et al. The Williams system conveys a bin with tablets to a counter and a vial to the counter. The counter dispenses tablets to the vial. Once the tablets have been dispensed, the system returns the bin to its original location and conveys the vial to an output device. Tablets may be counted and dispensed with any number of counting devices. Shows et al. discloses a system that includes multiple drawers, each of which includes a plurality of dispensing devices that dispense tablets into a dispensing chute. The dispensing devices may be of the so-called “Baker Cell” configuration (see U.S. Pat. No. 3,368,713 to Hurst et al.), in which the tablets are mechanically singulated and counted prior to dispensing into the dispensing chute. The tablets are stored in the dispensing chute until such time as a pharmacist or technician dispenses the tablets from the chute into a pharmaceutical vial.
Although this particular system can provide automated pharmaceutical dispensing, certain of the operations may be improved or varied. For example, in order to save on pharmacy space, some pharmacies may prefer automated singulation and counting of the pills, but with manual labeling, dispensing of the pills into the vial, and capping. Additionally, a system that separates the functions of prescription dispensing and system replenishment can allow for improved efficiency in pharmacy operations by allowing these functions to be performed simultaneously. Thus, there may be a need for a system that can address these types of operations, particularly one that can do so in an efficient manner.